Month: August 2026

30-day challenge

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What are your thoughts on 30-day challenges? Have you ever done one?

Now that September is about to start, it´s a very good time to consider doing one (and I just realised I wrote practically the same thing two years ago, when I was doing the challenge with 30 quotes in 30 days).

(Photo of the September page in my kitchen calendar at home.)

This year, at work, we´ve been encouraged to set a challenge for ourselves in September, somehow including the number 30, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of our company opening its first office in Ireland. I chose something (hopefully) as simple as exercising for a little while every day of the month; let´s see how it goes, I´ll let you know.

By the way, this "I´ll let you know" bit is not trivial at all: now that I´ve made a commitment in front of you all to exercise 30 days in a row, and that I´m going to have to tell you every week whether I´ve done it or not, I´ve just considerably raised the probabilities of me continuing with the challenge and completing it. Being accountable to another person is a fabulous trick to stay motivated.

But why? Because our brain finds it really hard to see the possible benefits of a healthy habit, as they´re only noticeable in the long term, and our brain is programmed to help us to survive in the short term. That´s why we would much rather lie on the sofa, conserving energy, than get up and go to the gym...

However, if staying on the sofa is going to bring along the embarrassment of having to admit in front of others that we haven´t kept our promise of going to the gym, then everything changes: the consequence, a punishment in this case, is a lot more immediate and tangible.

So I encourage you to use this trick to your advantage whenever you want to establish a new habit: let everybody know, and you´ll see how you end up doing it, if you don´t want to die of embarrassment! Or if not everybody, then at least let one person know; this is what we call an accountability partner, an English term that doesn´t seem to have a good translation into Spanish (one more for the list of untranslatables); the closest to this idea would be un compañero al que rendirle cuentas. And if your partner is also working on the same challenge, even better; you can hold each other accountable, and both of you will benefit.

So, what´s going to be your challenge for the month of September? And who´s going to be your accountability partner?

Untranslatable expressions: to pack light

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It´s been a while since I last dedicated a blog article to a phrase or expression from those that I call untranslatables, not exactly because they´re impossible to translate, but because they lose a lot of their charm (let´s say, their elegance) when translated from English into Spanish or vice versa.

Today´s expression is to pack light, and the problem here is not the word light, which directly translates as "ligero/a", but with the verb to pack, which in this context has a translation that´s long and clumsy, at least in the version of Spanish we use in Spain: "hacer las maletas" (in other versions of Spanish there´s the word empacar, which is shorter, yes, but sounds super weird to me).

In my opinion, the translation that best conveys the idea behind to pack light is "ligero de equipaje", and in both languages, the meaning goes beyond the mere act of packing: it refers to a way of travelling, and ultimately, to a philosophy of life.

(Picture I once hurriedly took of a person I saw in the street, or rather, of their bag. I loved that little drawing of the line going all over the place, anywhere but straight ahead, as a metaphor of the journey of life; it reminded me of the image I used a few years ago in this article.)

I admit I have never been a person who packs light, and I profoundly admire those who are able to. Even though I´d like to think I´ve improved slightly over the years, deep down I´m still the queen of "just-in-case"... So when it´s time to pack, I´m inevitably assaulted by doubts, and I lean too much towards the side of caution, which almost always results in me packing a lot more stuff than I actually need, with the corresponding extra load (both physical and emotional) associated to it.

All of this is coming to my head now because this weekend I´m travelling with the girls, one last little escapade before going back to school, and unsurprisingly, I filled up my suitcase almost to the top, while they had tons of free space in theirs! They could even have shared suitcases. I have A LOT to learn from them.

But there´s also another way to think about the concept of "packing light", and it´s in relation to our emotional baggage: all that weight we carry around, consciously or unconsciously (judgement, guilt, resentment...) that we would really benefit from getting rid of. That weight is not going to magically disappear, no matter how much we try to cover it or look the other way. But it can be lightened quite a lot through deep work involving awareness and personal growth.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you already travelling light? Or are you carrying a lot more than what you need?

Back to basics (again)

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It´s mid-August, and in Ireland (as I´m guessing is happening in Spain as well), there are "back to school" signs and ads everywhere.

I remember that, when I was younger, I really hated seeing them; I found it hard to accept that the summer was coming to an end, and that it was time to start thinking about getting back into the school year routine.

(Photo of a page in my square-gridded notebook.)

I guess nowadays I tend to be more philosophical with these kind of things; I find I can adapt more easily to the various cycles that life goes through (and that we go through as well). As they used to say in that old song, to everything there is a season... So, let´s focus on doing whatever it´s time to do at any given moment, and above all, let´s focus on enjoying it, and learning from it, instead of just resigning ourselves to suffer it.

Now that the beginning of a new school year is approaching, you may be experiencing the same thing that often happens to me: you already have a super long list of tasks, projects and assorted commitments to try and fit in the calendar, and you feel exhausted just by looking at it...

It´s the perfect moment to take a step back and go back to basics: make sure we´re taking proper care of ourselves, so that we can start the new school year with our batteries fullly charged, and armed with good habits that will help us to maintain our energy and enthusiasm.

How about you? Are you still in holiday mode, or in the process of coming back? What is it the time to do right now?

P.S.- "That old song", in case you´d like to look it up, is from the sixties; I remember it from the TV series The wonder years. The title is Turn, turn, turn, from a band called The Byrds:

To everything (turn, turn, turn), there is a season (turn, turn, turn)...

Generations

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I´m writing these lines from Barajas airport, getting ready to fly back to Dublin after a two-week holiday in Spain.

I´m coming back tired, but also happy: it´s been time really well spent. The holidays have been slightly chaotic, having to change plans a couple of times, but in the end, it has all turned out really well.

And the best part, no doubt, has been meeting Mar, the first baby of my family´s next generation, in person, in a place where the memory of her great-grandparents Ángel and Mari Carmen is always very present.

One more generation... I often have a feeling I find very interesting when I meet with friends, or even my siblings: that it seems time hasn´t passed and we are the same as always... Until we look at our children, at the next generation, and then we realise!

As usual, here are a few quotes to reflect on this topic:

Each generation imagines itself
to be more intelligent than the one that went before it,
and wiser than the one that comes after it.

George Orwell

We need to remember across generations
that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.

Gloria Steinem

What one generation sees as a luxury,
the next sees as a necessity.

Anthony Crosland

And one that I found very funny:

From the earliest time, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was, they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture. - W. Somerset Maugham

Closed for vacation (III)

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As it´s already tradition in this blog, I´m writing my vacation post from my happy place, where I´ve been very lucky to return once again this summer (you can read articles from previous years here and here).

(Photo taken today at sunset, from the "rock-house" where I used to play so often as a child.)

Once again, the old and the new get intertwined as I reacquaint myself with certain places and people: memories living alongside the here and now, creating a feeling of continuity. In a way, it´s always the same, but at the same time, it´s never the same.

Heraclitus said that you cannot swim twice in the same river, because neither you nor the river will be the same, with everything being in constant change. And this other quote goes along the same lines:

You won't find the same person twice,
not even in the same person.

Mahmud Darwish

I think this is a good reminder of the fact that we all change over time (whether we like it or not), and that we must give ourselves (and others) permission to grow, learn and evolve as a person, each of us in our own style and at our own pace, even if that implies not fulfilling certain expectations (I will tell you about "growth guilt" later on, in a future article).

But I also have to say that, similarly to what happens with certain places, even though people progressively change, there´s a certain continuity to them that stays over the years. A good analogy that can help with understanding this is a tree: a cherry tree can grow very tall or stay small; it can become quite leafy or barely have leaves, depending on different factors like the weather, sunlight, water, soil nutrients... But what it´s never ever going to do is become a pine tree, an oak tree or a palm tree.

Similarly, each person has a certain way to be, to show up,, which of course can mature and stabilise over time, but, save for cases like serious trauma and the like, broadly speaking, it´s going to continue the same. Our brain finds it really difficult to change, and it does so very slowly, bit by bit; that´s why it´s so important to have tools to help us make the most of that continuity (instead of fighting against it) and progressively become the best version of ourselves.

What about you? What particular places and people do you find simultaneously familiar and different?